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A Vietnamese fisher was critically injured after an unidentified vessel allegedly rammed his boat off Vietnam’s Paracel Islands on Thursday night.

Pham Quoc Dung, 43, will need an emergency surgery as his bladder was ruptured and kidney badly damaged, doctors on Ly Son Island off central Vietnam said Saturday morning, soon after Dung’s boat docked at the island.

Captain Huynh Duoc said the ferry and his 10 crew on Thursday morning left Ly Son and was headed to the Paracel Islands -- their traditional fishing ground -- as usual.

The boat was being anchored about 30 km from Triton Island in the Paracels when an unidentified vessel rammed it from behind at roughly 11:45 pm on Thursday, Duoc said.

“We were sleeping then,” Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper quoted Duoc as saying. Duoc said he and his crew couldn’t identify the “strange” vessel because it was dark and they were busy taking care of Dung.

The incident damaged part of the boat’s right stern, Duoc said.

He said in early 2014 his boat was also vandalized and its properties robbed off the Paracels by a Chinese ship.

Over the past years, hundreds of Vietnamese fishermen and their crews have fallen prey to China's increasingly aggressive patrols around the disputed islands in the East Sea, internationally known as the South China Sea.